Back from SXSW, and miracles!

Hello, friends! I've now returned from SXSW. I am absolutely dead tired--and simultaneously, I am very pleased due to all the new fans we made!

While we're on the subject, I'll share another fun anecdote from SXSW with you. At one point during the weekend, I demoed the game for a professional Hearthstone player and his lady friend; he played the black messiah, and she, violet. Well into the game, the black messiah played Holy Day: a miracle which suspends all combat until the end of the player's next turn.

With Holy Day in play, they then each proceeded to spend their subsequent, combat-less turns stacking up loads of followers in the center of the board, relocating multiple temples adjacent to one another's armies:

If you've watched the combat and looting video from our last update, then you already know what a risk this was! (If a temple is left empty after combat and an enemy player has units remaining next to it, they can capture or destroy the temple, looting some of the victim's coins and miracle cards.) I watched this all transpire in horrified fascination, then quickly snapped the photo you see above to document what was happening.

Holy Day expired, violet's turn came, and just prior to combat finally taking place, down came the hammer--black played God's Mercy:

This saved 3 of black's followers on the front lines from death. Black ended up losing only (only!) 9 followers to violet's 12--but more significantly, because violet had relocated two of her (now empty) temples, this resulted in black looting multiple violet temples in a single turn. It was one of the most ridiculous bloodbaths I'd ever seen transpire in True Messiah!

(Funnily enough, violet actually ended up winning this game a round or two later by surprise-capturing black's holy city via a "hail Mary" Pilgrimage play--but that's a story for another time.)

While we're talking about miracles, I think it's time for our next how-to-play video. This one focuses on the starting miracles that constitute each player's deck at the beginning of the game. There are, of course, many many more miracles to talk about--but I think this gives a solid introduction to how miracles are used:

As you can see, True Messiah's miracles are deliberately designed to be versatile, each enabling multiple different tactics. This provides each player a wide variety of tactics from the start of the game, and that variety only grows as each game progresses. This tactical versatility is one of my favorite design features in the game--it is, to my mind, one of the key things which gives True Messiah such incredible depth and replayability.

All right, that's quite enough out of me; this update is quite long enough. I'm off to go see if I can drum up some more publicity so we can get this game funded!